Thank you all for agreeing to give up a whole day to be part of laying the groundwork for re-defining the future of our city.

We couldn't invite everyone who wanted to come today, so each of us has a responsibility tocontribute 150%. I don't want anyone feeling jealous that you got to come to this workshopand they didn't – you need to help them organise an even better workshop for the people we didn't reach today and would not reach even if we had hundreds in the room.

We are on a journey. And this is a small but important first step.

I want to thank the DHB for allowing us to come to the Design Lab, an environment that allowsfor everyone to combine their individual knowledge and expertise, so that a collective wisdomcan emerge.

This is a place that constantly proves that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" andthat is what I want from today.

We are at a crossroads as a city.

As I said last night resilience is not a destination – it is a means by which we can determine ourdestination as well as providing us with the means of getting there.

I often describe the time since the first earthquake as my journey of discovery. I have learnednew words that I didn't know before, like liquefaction and lateral spread, but more importantlyI have learned the true meaning of words like, community, leadership and resilience.

A community is not the co-location of houses – that's a suburb – a community is therelationship between the people in those houses, or with a shared interest, culture or identity,and their relationship with other communities and with decision-makers.

Leadership is not a position you hold; it is a mark of character. Leaders are trusted and in turntrust others to lead in their own right.

And resilience is not strong in the face of adversity – that is stoicism. Resilience captures thefull range from planning and preparedness, through absorbing adversity to recovery,adaptation and the capacity to co-create a new normal.

The new council elected by the city nearly 6 months ago has major challenges to address. Butthis way of thinking provides an exciting springboard for whatever future we want to co-create

for ourselves as a city that will at the very least emerge with the capacity to thrive in the face ofadversity. As they would say in Aranui – bring it on!

That's what a resilient city looks like to me, but that's just me. What I think at the end of todaymay well change. I have learned enough to know that even though I like being proved right, Iam much happier knowing that I have the capacity to listen to others, to analyse what they sayand to make adjustments to my own frame of reference if necessary. This is co-creation we aremodelling here today.

People said that they were pleased about what I said last night for two reasons – one theacknowledgement that not everyone is ready to hear about resilience, because they are sick ofhearing that they are resilient when they are not. The other was the acknowledgement thatgovernments cannot build resilience for communities. We can help communities buildresilience but that is as far as we can go.

I said I was going to go a step further this morning to explain about my journey of discoveryand why I see this as a way to do government differently.

Shortly after the February quakes I was given a copy of a March 2010 report of a roundtablemeeting on: Resilience and Emergence in Public Administration. It was convened to explorethese two themes:

[1]Emergence: Governments are increasingly called upon to serve in highly complex anduncertain circumstances, where public issues regularly emerge as surprises and requireequally emergent responses. This transforms the role of government and the relationshipbetween government and society. It emphasizes the need for more agile, innovative andadaptive approaches to governance and public administration.

[1]Resilience: Notwithstanding the efforts of governments and citizens to explore, innovate,prevent, pre-empt or course-correct, unforeseen events will arise and unpredictable shocks willoccur. The role of government extends to promoting the resilience of individuals, communitiesand society.

I won't go through the report but it opened my mind to resilience as a much bigger conceptthan I had imagined; it introduced me to the notion that both neglect and dependencyundermine resilience.; and that governments should emphasise strengths-based,collaborative, positive, learning-led approaches over negative, deficit-based, vulnerability-ledstrategies.

This reminded me that these ideas were not new and that I was just hearing them in a differentcontext. This is from the 1989 Ottawa Charter on Health Promotion:

"Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and toimprove, their health. To reach a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, an individual or group must be able to identify and to realize aspirations, tosatisfy needs, and to change or cope with the environment. Health is, therefore, seen asa resource for everyday life, not the objective of living. Health is a positive conceptemphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities. Therefore,health promotion is not just the responsibility of the health sector, but goes beyondhealthy life-styles to well-being."

Health promotion works through concrete and effective community action in settingpriorities, making decisions, planning strategies and implementing them to achievebetter health.

At the heart of this process is the empowerment of communities - their ownership andcontrol of their own endeavours and destinies.

Community development draws on existing human and material resources in thecommunity to enhance self-help and social support, and to develop flexible systems forstrengthening public participation in and direction of health matters. This requires fulland continuous access to information, learning opportunities for health, as well asfunding support.

The French have a nice phrase 'plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose' – the more thingschange the more they stay the same.

What was new for me in the Roundtable report was the concept of emergence, the lack ofpredictability about what the future might hold, the theory around complexity and theimportance of trustful leadership in such environments – externally focussed, nonhierarchical, connected with society. I was also introduced to the concept of co-creation. Thatwas completely new to me.

At their essence the two concepts resilience and emergence promoted a form of partnershipbetween government and society which sees we, the people, not as consumers but as engagedcitizens actively involved in decision-making and becoming more resilient individually andcollectively. The role of government – both central and local – changes as well and webecome:

· Enablers within a framework of collective responsibility;· Partners who use their power and that of the State to support the contributions of others;partnership depending as it does on trust, goodwill and mutual respect;

· Facilitators who convene citizens and organisations to build communities of purpose;· Collaborative actors who work with others to coordinate decisions and to achieveconcerted actions;· Stewards of the collective interest with the power to intervene and to course-correct whenthe public interest demands it;· Leaders to achieve convergence and a common sense of purpose;

I can't even remember what the source is for that quote.

In preparing for today, I discovered in my files a paper entitled Policy Challenges supportingCommunity Resilience. It said this:

"The strategic foundation of all hazards resilience ... involves engagement with neighborhoodassociations, businesses, schools, faith-based community groups, trade groups, fraternalorganizations, ethnic centers, and other civic-minded organizations that have routine, directties to local communities. In a real sense, they are the community. Local collective action, by,with and for the individuals who live in local areas, becomes the leading edge of efforts toprotect and sustain the nation.

Local collective action – by, with and for the locals – protects and sustains the nation.

And that's the thinking that gets me out of bed every day.

I know that there are many people in our city who are struggling and would see no point incoming to a workshop about resilience.

But I know their lives would be enhanced if the energy they have been forced to dissipate infighting the system, their insurer, EQC, their council could be focused on everything they wanttheir city to be.

I see imagination, creativity and innovation at work everyday in this city. I see the wisdom ofage combining with the energy of youth everywhere I look.

There is life in vacant spaces as we now know and as Lonely Planet knows and the New YorkTimes knows.

We need optimism, self-reliance and strong partnerships built on trust.

We need to unlock the potential of the people – and we will be a resilient city – but we will alsobe a place where people want to be, because they are leading the life they want to lead.